One of my favorite signs of spring is when the butterflies start appearing from nowhere to land on flower petals and show off their gorgeous God-given colors.
We did a simple craft this year for the butterfly just by placing a stencil on paper and dusting with chalk all around it. As you can see, it made a beautiful outline of a butterfly to hang in our window.
It occurred to me the other day that butterflies can be a resurrection reminder in the same way an egg can (though I have yet to figure out where the bunny rabbits come in).
A butterfly begins as a caterpillar, crawling with his belly on the earth. One day, he Realizes—follows his instincts that tell him he could be so much more—and wraps himself in a cocoon. Weeks later, he resurrects into a beautiful, incredible butterfly.
Do you see the comparison? I’m not talking about Jesus’ resurrection this time, but our own. When we accept the truth of Jesus as our savior, we are “born again.” We begin as lowly caterpillars, creatures who were created in God’s image but have fallen in sin and now live in a sinful world that was once perfect. We spend our days, however, with an emptiness, a longing, that fills our very being. Everyone has this. We all have a “God-shaped hole” in our hearts that can only be filled by God himself.
When we Realize this, when we recognize that instinct in us that says we were created for so much more than this, we can wrap ourselves in the cocoon of God’s truth. As His truth fills us and molds us, we emerge perfected. Not perfect, but perfected into something so beautiful that, hopefully, people will look at our lives and see that something has changed. That we are no longer a caterpillar but are now a butterfly. Just as God designed us to be.
And because we are no longer caterpillars, we should stop living like caterpillars. You don’t see butterflies still crawling up trees or inching their way along. Instead, they spread their wings and fly, seeing the world from a completely different perspective and finding the beauty in it in a way they just couldn’t perceive as caterpillars. So, too, should we change our ways when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
Too often, we want to slink back to our caterpillar days. Perhaps flying is harder than we thought, or we feel sorry for all those poor caterpillars still stuck on the ground. But the point is: all caterpillars have the capability to become butterflies. If we, as “butterflies,” showed them the beauty and perfection they could achieve, instead of longing to join them back on the ground, perhaps more “caterpillars” would find the Truth.
To that end, I seek each day to live as an example to my children, and to my friends and family, so that one day, they, too, might join me in becoming a butterfly.
Something to think about this Easter…
